Models Of Time Perception Research Articles

Adaptation reveals multi-stage coding of visual duration

In conflict with historically dominant models of time perception, recent evidence suggests that the encoding of our environment’s temporal properties may not require a separate class of neurons whose raison d'être is the dedicated processing of temporal information. If true, it follows that temporal processing should be imbued with the known selectivity found within non-temporal neurons. In the current study, we tested this hypothesis for the processing of a poorly understood stimulus parameter: visual event duration. We used sensory adaptation techniques to generate duration aftereffects: bidirectional distortions of perceived duration. Presenting adapting and test durations to the same vs different eyes utilises the visual system’s anatomical progression from monocular, pre-cortical neurons to their binocular, cortical counterparts. Duration aftereffects exhibited robust inter-ocular transfer alongside a small but significant contribution from monocular mechanisms. We then used novel stimuli which provided duration information that was invisible to monocular neurons. These stimuli generated robust duration aftereffects which showed partial selectivity for adapt-test changes in retinal disparity. Our findings reveal distinct duration encoding mechanisms at monocular, depth-selective and depth-invariant stages of the visual hierarchy.

Neuropsychological approach in the investigation of time perception in late life depression

Late life depression is characterized by changes in time perception which are connected with the state of higher mental functions and their neuropsychological correlates. To the investigation of these connections our study was dedicated. A complex of methods included the Lurian neuropsychological diagnostics, prospective estimation of 5-, 10- and 15-second intervals and production of 1 min interval, retrospective estimation of the length of diagnostics and current time. Participants from control (n=26) and clinical (n=48) groups aged 50-81 were equal in sociodemographic characteristics. The interconnections between the characteristics of time perception and the different types of neuropsychological deficit as well as the characteristics of other higher mental functions were analyzed. With the purpose of the possibility of this multidimensional analysis the model of time perception was designed. The specifics of the inclusion and hierarchization of different components of the system with the purpose of achievement of adaptive result – time structuring of activity – was investigated. According to the hypotheses, in late life depression retrospective estimation deficit would be connected withmemory deterioration, therefore, with dysfunction of deeper subcortical structures; the elaborated model of time perception was assumed to be useful in the analysis of time perception in its connection with other higher mental functions in old age. According to the results, in normal aging changes in time perception areconnected with spatial deficit of memory, perception and praxis; in prospective judgments attention and control functions play a role. Time perception deficit is connected with dysfunction of deeper subcortical structures accenting in right hemisphere; prospective estimation – with prefrontal structures. In late life depression time perception deficit is connected with attention and control functions deficit;prospective judgments – with praxis; retrospective judgments – with memory deterioration. Prospective estimation deficit is connected with deficit in lefthemispheric structures and interhemispheric interaction; retrospective estimation deficit – with dysfunction of deeper subcortical structures. In different variantsof aging tendencies to overestimation/underproduction of short intervals are connected with left-hemispheric dysfunction; to underestimation/overproduction – right-hemispheric dysfunction. Consequently, the hypotheses were approved and a full picture of interconnections between time perception and other functions and their neuropsychological correlates in late life depression was obtained. The proposed model of time perception was appropriate for analysis of time perception as it allows to reveal impaired the same as intact units of a functional system and to assume the primary or the secondary nature of impairments. The features of time perception interpreted based on the model may become the detectors of cognitive as well asaffective dysfunction in old age.
 Keywords: time perception, neuropsychology, gerontology, gerontopsychology, late life, depression, late life depression, higher mental functions, functional system, model of time perception.

Логіко-когнітивні моделі темпоральної дійсності під час прийняття оперативних рішень у кризових умовах функціонування техногенних систем (Ч. І)

Проведено аналіз та показано, що в когнітивній структурі особистості присутній іманентний темпоральний пласт, завдяки якому людина володіє здібністю конструктивно орієнтуватися у часовому просторі під час прийняття оперативних рішень в умовах загроз. Беручи це до уваги та враховуючи індивідуальність та неповторність кожної людини, такий феномен, за граничних режимів управління техногенними системами, може призвести до аварійних ситуацій з масштабними техногенними та екологічними наслідками. А отже, в разі невідповідного інтелектуального рівня і низької професійної підготовки оператор, у структурі управління енергоактивними об'єктами, не зможе своєчасно забезпечити реалізацію протиаварійних рішень. І тільки високий рівень інтелекту, відповідні психічні та вольові характеристики та професійна підготовка управлінського персоналу є запорукою ефективного протистояння загрозам виникнення аварійних ситуацій. Проаналізовано основні літературні джерела, глибиною до п'ятдесяти років, визначено проблему, мету і методи дослідження. Виклад основного матеріалу охоплює: аналіз проблеми прийняття рішень у кризових ситуаціях; опис інформаційного базису управління; ігрові моделі ситуацій управління; обґрунтування необхідності використання темпоральної логіки в процедурах прийняття рішень; аналіз сприйняття часу оператором та прийняття ним рішень з оцінкою швидкості мислення; логіко-когнітивну модель сприйняття часу оператором; логіко-лінгвіністичні темпоральні правила прийняття управлінських рішень в екстремальних ситуаціях.

The effects of emotional states and traits on time perception

BackgroundModels of time perception share an element of scalar expectancy theory known as the internal clock, containing specific mechanisms by which the brain is able to experience time passing and function effectively. A debate exists about whether to treat factors that influence these internal clock mechanisms (e.g., emotion, personality, executive functions, and related neurophysiological components) as arousal- or attentional-based factors.PurposeThis study investigated behavioral and neurophysiological responses to an affective time perception Go/NoGo task, taking into account the behavioral inhibition (BIS) and behavioral activation systems (BASs), which are components of reinforcement sensitivity theory.MethodsAfter completion of self-report inventories assessing personality traits, electroencephalogram (EEG/ERP) and behavioral recordings of 32 women and 13 men recruited from introductory psychology classes were completed during an affective time perception Go/NoGo task. This task required participants to respond (Go) and inhibit (NoGo) to positive and negative affective visual stimuli of various durations in comparison to a standard duration.ResultsHigher BAS scores (especially BAS Drive) were associated with overestimation bias scores for positive stimuli, while BIS scores were not correlated with overestimation bias scores. Furthermore, higher BIS Total scores were associated with higher N2d amplitudes during positive stimulus presentation for 280 ms, while higher BAS Total scores were associated with higher N2d amplitudes during negative stimuli presentation for 910 ms.DiscussionFindings are discussed in terms of arousal-based models of time perception, and suggestions for future research are considered.

Timing in the absence of a clock reset.

Prominent models of time perception assume a reset of the timing mechanism with an explicit onset of the interval to be timed. Here we investigated the accuracy and precision of temporal estimations when the duration does not have such an explicit onset. Participants were tracking a disc moving on a circular path with varying speeds, and estimated the duration of one full revolution before the stimulus stopped. The onset of that revolution was either cued (explicit), or undetermined until the stimulus stopped (implicit). Reproduced duration was overestimated for short and underestimated for long durations, and variability of the estimates scaled with the duration in both temporal conditions. However, the bias was more pronounced in the implicit condition. In addition, if the stimulus path was partially occluded, duration of the occluded motion was correctly estimated. In a second experiment, we compared the precision in the explicit and implicit conditions by asking participants to discriminate the duration of one revolution before the stimulus stopped to that of a static stimulus presentation in a forced-choice task. Sensitivity of discrimination was worse in the implicit onset condition, but surprisingly, still comparable to the explicit condition. In summary, the estimates follow principles described in prospective timing paradigms, although not knowing beforehand when to start timing decreases sensitivity of temporal estimations. Since in naturalistic contexts, we often do not know in advance which durations might be relevant to estimate, the simple task presented here could become a valuable tool for testing models of temporal estimation.

The Amount of Time Dilation for Visual Flickers Corresponds to the Amount of Neural Entrainments Measured by EEG.

The neural basis of time perception has long attracted the interests of researchers. Recently, a conceptual model consisting of neural oscillators was proposed and validated by behavioral experiments that measured the dilated duration in perception of a flickering stimulus (Hashimoto and Yotsumoto, 2015). The model proposed that flickering stimuli cause neural entrainment of oscillators, resulting in dilated time perception. In this study, we examined the oscillator-based model of time perception, by collecting electroencephalography (EEG) data during an interval-timing task. Initially, subjects observed a stimulus, either flickering at 10-Hz or constantly illuminated. The subjects then reproduced the duration of the stimulus by pressing a button. As reported in previous studies, the subjects reproduced 1.22 times longer durations for flickering stimuli than for continuously illuminated stimuli. The event-related potential (ERP) during the observation of a flicker oscillated at 10 Hz, reflecting the 10-Hz neural activity phase-locked to the flicker. Importantly, the longer reproduced duration was associated with a larger amplitude of the 10-Hz ERP component during the inter-stimulus interval, as well as during the presentation of the flicker. The correlation between the reproduced duration and the 10-Hz oscillation during the inter-stimulus interval suggested that the flicker-induced neural entrainment affected time dilation. While the 10-Hz flickering stimuli induced phase-locked entrainments at 10 Hz, we also observed event-related desynchronizations of spontaneous neural oscillations in the alpha-frequency range. These could be attributed to the activation of excitatory neurons while observing the flicker stimuli. In addition, neural activity at approximately the alpha frequency increased during the reproduction phase, indicating that flicker-induced neural entrainment persisted even after the offset of the flicker. In summary, our results suggest that the duration perception is mediated by neural oscillations, and that time dilation induced by flickering visual stimuli can be attributed to neural entrainment.

The effect of attention and working memory on the estimation of elapsed time

Psychological models of time perception involve attention and memory: while attention typically regulates the flow of events, memory maintains timed events or intervals. The precise, and possibly distinct, roles of attention and memory in time perception remain debated. In this behavioral study, we tested 48 participants in a prospective duration estimation task while they fully attended to time or performed a working memory (WM) task. We report that paying attention to time lengthened perceived duration in the range of seconds to minutes, whereas diverting attention away from time shortened perceived duration. The overestimation due to attending to time did not scale with durations. To the contrary, increasing WM load systematically decreased subjective duration and this effect scaled with durations. Herein, we discuss the dissociation between attention and WM in timing and scalar variability from the perspective of Bayesian models of time estimations.

On the Distinction Between Perceived Duration and Event Timing: Towards a Unified Model of Time Perception

Time is a fundamental dimension of human perception, cognition and action, as the processing and cognition of temporal information is essential for everyday activities and survival. Innumerable studies have investigated the perception of time over the last 100 years, but the neural and computational bases for the processing of time remains unknown. Extant models of time perception are discussed before the proposition of a unified model of time perception that relates perceived event timing with perceived duration. The distinction between perceived event timing and perceived duration provides the current for navigating a river of contemporary approaches to time perception. Recent work has advocated a Bayesian approach to time perception. This framework has been applied to both duration and perceived timing, where prior expectations about when a stimulus might occur in the future (prior distribution) are combined with current sensory evidence (likelihood function) in order to generate the perception of temporal properties (posterior distribution). In general, these models predict that the brain uses temporal expectations to bias perception in a way that stimuli are ‘regularized’ i.e. stimuli look more like what has been seen before. As such, the synthesis of perceived timing and duration models is of theoretical importance for the field of timing and time perception.

Distortion in time perception as a result of concern about appearing biased.

Two experiments illustrate that the perception of a given time duration slows when white participants observe faces of black men, but only if participants are concerned with appearing biased. In Experiment 1 the concern with the appearance of bias is measured as a chronic state using the external motivation to respond without prejudice scale (Plant & Devine, 1998). In Experiment 2 it is manipulated by varying the race of the experimenter (black versus white). Time perception is assessed via a temporal discrimination task commonly used in the literature. Models of time perception identify arousal as a factor that causes perceived time to slow, and we speculate that arousal arising in intergroup interactions can alter time perception.

It's about time: revisiting temporal processing deficits in dyslexia.

Temporal processing in French children with dyslexia was evaluated in three tasks: a word identification task requiring implicit temporal processing, and two explicit temporal bisection tasks, one in the auditory and one in the visual modality. Normally developing children matched on chronological age and reading level served as a control group. Children with dyslexia exhibited robust deficits in temporal tasks whether they were explicit or implicit and whether they involved the auditory or the visual modality. First, they presented larger perceptual variability when performing temporal tasks, whereas they showed no such difficulties when performing the same task on a non-temporal dimension (intensity). This dissociation suggests that their difficulties were specific to temporal processing and could not be attributed to lapses of attention, reduced alertness, faulty anchoring, or overall noisy processing. In the framework of cognitive models of time perception, these data point to a dysfunction of the 'internal clock' of dyslexic children. These results are broadly compatible with the recent temporal sampling theory of dyslexia.

Time on your hands: Perceived duration of sensory events is biased toward concurrent actions.

Perceptual systems must rapidly generate accurate representations of the world from sensory inputs that are corrupted by internal and external noise. We can typically obtain more veridical representations by integrating information from multiple channels, but this integration can lead to biases when inputs are, in fact, not from the same source. Although a considerable amount is known about how different sources of information are combined to influence what we perceive, it is not known whether temporal features are combined. It is vital to address this question given the divergent predictions made by different models of cue combination and time perception concerning the plausibility of cross-modal temporal integration, and the implications that such integration would have for research programs in action control and social cognition. Here we present four experiments investigating the influence of movement duration on the perceived duration of an auditory tone. Participants either explicitly (Experiments 1-2) or implicitly (Experiments 3-4) produced hand movements of shorter or longer durations, while judging the duration of a concurrently presented tone (500-950 ms in duration). Across all experiments, judgments of tone duration were attracted toward the duration of executed movements (i.e., tones were perceived to be longer when executing a movement of longer duration). Our results demonstrate that temporal information associated with movement biases perceived auditory duration, placing important constraints on theories modeling cue integration for state estimation, as well as models of time perception, action control and social cognition. (PsycINFO Database Record

The influence of social stress on time perception and psychophysiological reactivity.

Time perception is a fundamental component of everyday life. Although time can be measured using standard units, the relationship between an individual's experience of perceived time and a standard unit is highly sensitive to context. Stressful and threatening stimuli have been previously shown to produce time distortion effects, such that individuals perceive the stimuli as lasting for different amounts of time as compared to a standard unit. As a highly social species, humans are acutely sensitive to social stressors; however, time distortion effects have not been studied in the context of social stress. We collected psychophysiological (electrocardiogram and impedance cardiography) and time perception data before, during, and after a modified version of the Trier Social Stress Test for 42 participants. Based on prior theories and evidence from the time perception literature, we hypothesized that experiencing a stressful event would result in time distortion. This hypothesis was supported by the data, with individuals on average reproducing short and long duration negative and positive stimuli as lasting longer after experiencing social stress, t(41) = -3.55, p = .001, and t(41) = -4.12, p < .001 for negative stimuli, and t(41) = -2.43, p = .02, and t(41) = -3.07, p = .004 for positive stimuli. However, changes in time perception were largely unrelated to psychophysiological reactivity to social stress. These findings are in line with some other studies of time distortion, and provide evidence for the interoceptive salience model of time perception. Implications for mechanisms of time distortion are discussed.

The role of executive control in rhythmic timing at different tempi.

We investigated the role of attention and executive control in rhythmic timing, using a dual-task paradigm. The main task was a finger tapping task in which participants were asked to tap their index finger in time with metronome sequences. The tempo of the sequences ranged from 600 ms to 3000 ms between each beat. The distractor task, chosen so as to engage executive control processes, was a novel covert n-back task. When the tempo was slow, simultaneous performance of the tapping and n-back tasks resulted in significant performance degradation in both tasks. There was also some dual-task interference at the fast tempo levels, however, the magnitude of the interference was much smaller in comparison. The results suggests that, when the tempo is sufficiently slow, performing rhythmic timing demands attentional resources and executive control. This accords with models of time perception that assume that different timing mechanisms are recruited at different time scales. It also accords with models that assume a dedicated mechanism for rhythm perception and where rhythm perception is assumed to have a slower limit.

Discriminative Fear Learners are Resilient to Temporal Distortions during Threat Anticipation.

Discriminative fear conditioning requires learning to dissociate between safety cues and cues that predict negative outcomes yet little is known about what processes contribute to discriminative fear learning. According to attentional models of time perception, processes that distract from timing result in temporal underestimation. If discriminative fear learning only requires learning what cues predict what outcomes, and threatening stimuli distract attention from timing, then better discriminative fear learning should predict greater temporal distortion on threat trials. Alternatively, if discriminative fear learning also reflects a more accurate perceptual experience of time in threatening contexts, discriminative fear learning scores would predict less temporal distortion on threat trials, as time is perceived more veridically. Healthy young adults completed discriminative fear conditioning in which they learned to associate one stimulus (CS+) with aversive electrical stimulation and another stimulus (CS-) with non-aversive tactile stimulation and then an ordinal comparison timing task during which CSs were presented as task-irrelevant distractors Consistent with predictions, we found an overall temporal underestimation bias on CS+ relative to CS- trials. Differential skin conductance responses to the CS+ versus the CS- during conditioning served as a physiological index of discriminative fear conditioning and this measure predicted the magnitude of the underestimation bias, such that individuals exhibiting greater discriminative fear conditioning showed less underestimation on CS+ versus CS- trials. These results are discussed with respect to the nature of discriminative fear learning and the relationship between temporal distortions and maladaptive threat processing in anxiety.

Специфика когнитивных репрезентаций времени в пожилом и старческом возрасте

The article is devoted to research features of verbal and nonverbal cognitive representations of time as a component of the cognitive model of time perception in elderly and senile age. The basis of the relationship to time is a cognitive model of time perception, consisting of the cognitive representation of time. Cognitive model of time involved in the process of shaping a person's entire picture of the world and understanding their place in it. The results of the study allow us to describe the specifics of the knowing and experiencing of time. Representation of time in elderly and senile are characterized by the description of the time through the prism of the life, units of measuring time, as well as metaphorical images describing the properties and rate of flow of time. Time, in later ages represented as a finite resource that is accompanied by a feeling of scarcity, time pressure and accelerated subjective time.

Rapid temporal accumulation in spider fear: Evidence from hierarchical drift diffusion modelling.

Fear can distort sense of time--making time seem slow or even stand still. Here, I used hierarchical drift diffusion modeling (HDDM; Vandekerckhove, Tuerlinckx, & Lee, 2008, 2011; Wiecki, Sofer, & Frank, 2013) to test the idea that temporal accumulation speeds up during fear. Eighteen high fearful and 23 low fearful participants judged the duration of both feared stimuli (spiders) and nonfeared stimuli (birds) in a temporal bisection task. The drift diffusion modeling results support the main hypothesis. In high but not low fearful individuals, evidence accumulated more rapidly toward a long duration decision-drift rates were higher-for spiders compared with birds. This result and further insights into how fear affects time perception would not have been possible on the basis of analyses of choice proportion data alone. Further results were interpreted in the context of a recent 2-stage model of time perception (Balcı & Simen, 2014). The results highlight the usefulness of diffusion modeling to test process-based explanations of disordered cognition in emotional disorders.

Subjective Stimulus Duration Depends on Visual Field Location

Event Abstract Back to Event Subjective Stimulus Duration Depends on Visual Field Location Xiaoqin Cheng1, Katrin Kliegl2, Anke Huckauf2 and Trevor Penney1* 1 National University of Singapore, Psychology and LSI Neurobiology/Aging Programme, Singapore 2 Ulm University, General Psychology, Institute of Psychology and Pedagogy, Germany Kliegl and Huckauf (submitted) asked participants to indicate whether the standard stimulus, presented first and at fixation, or the comparison stimulus, presented second and to the left or right of fixation along the horizontal meridian, was longer in duration. They found that the point of subjective equality increased as eccentricity increased. In other words, stimuli seem shorter when presented in the periphery as compared to on the fovea. Here, we used an eye-tracker to ensure that this horizontal eccentricity effect was not due to saccadic suppression resulting from gaze shifts during stimulus presentation (Exp. 1) and to determine whether the eccentricity effect would also hold along the vertical meridian (Exp. 2). In Experiment 1, the standard stimulus was 120 ms and presented at fixation whereas the comparison stimuli ranged from 20 to 220 ms and were presented at 3, 6, or 9 degrees from fixation. The horizontal eccentricity effect was present even when trials containing saccades were excluded from the analysis. In Experiment 2, standard duration (i.e., 120, 170, 210 ms) was a between subjects factor and vertical eccentricity (3, 6, 9 degrees) was a within subjects factor. The interaction between stimulus duration and eccentricity was statistically significant. Follow-up analyses revealed that for the 120 ms condition the PSE was significantly larger for each increase in eccentricity, whereas for the 170 ms condition the PSE at 6 degrees and 9 degrees was larger than at 3 degrees, but did not differ between 6 and 9 degrees. For the 210 ms condition there were no statistically significant effects of eccentricity. Taken together, the results indicate that the location of a stimulus along the horizontal and vertical meridians affects its perceived duration. Moreover, the effect is not due to saccadic suppression and may not manifest for durations larger than about 200 ms. These results will be discussed in light of current models of time perception. Keywords: Time Perception, interval timing, retinal eccentricity, Time distortion, milliseconds range Conference: XII International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience (ICON-XII), Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, 27 Jul - 31 Jul, 2014. Presentation Type: Poster Topic: Sensation and Perception Citation: Cheng X, Kliegl K, Huckauf A and Penney T (2015). Subjective Stimulus Duration Depends on Visual Field Location. Conference Abstract: XII International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience (ICON-XII). doi: 10.3389/conf.fnhum.2015.217.00169 Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters. The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated. Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed. For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions. Received: 19 Feb 2015; Published Online: 24 Apr 2015. * Correspondence: Prof. Trevor Penney, National University of Singapore, Psychology and LSI Neurobiology/Aging Programme, Singapore, Singapore, penney@cuhk.edu.hk Login Required This action requires you to be registered with Frontiers and logged in. To register or login click here. Abstract Info Abstract The Authors in Frontiers Xiaoqin Cheng Katrin Kliegl Anke Huckauf Trevor Penney Google Xiaoqin Cheng Katrin Kliegl Anke Huckauf Trevor Penney Google Scholar Xiaoqin Cheng Katrin Kliegl Anke Huckauf Trevor Penney PubMed Xiaoqin Cheng Katrin Kliegl Anke Huckauf Trevor Penney Related Article in Frontiers Google Scholar PubMed Abstract Close Back to top Javascript is disabled. Please enable Javascript in your browser settings in order to see all the content on this page.

The effect of pain and the anticipation of pain on temporal perception: A role for attention and arousal

The overestimation of the duration of fear-inducing stimuli relative to neutral stimuli is a robust finding within the temporal perception literature. Whilst this effect is consistently reported with auditory and visual stimuli, there has been little examination of whether it can be replicated using painful stimulation. The aim of the current study was, therefore, to explore how pain and the anticipation of pain affected perceived duration of time. A modified verbal estimation paradigm was developed in which participants estimated the duration of shapes previously conditioned to be associated with pain, compared to those not associated with pain. Duration estimates were significantly longer on trials in which pain was received or anticipated than on control trials. Slope and intercept analysis revealed that the anticipation of pain resulted in steeper slopes and greater intercept values than for control trials. The results suggest that increased arousal and attention, when anticipating and experiencing pain, result in longer perceived durations. The results are discussed in relation to internal clock theory and neurocognitive models of time perception.

Perceived duration decreases with increasing eccentricity

Previous studies examining the influence of stimulus location on temporal perception yield inhomogeneous and contradicting results. Therefore, the aim of the present study is to soundly examine the effect of stimulus eccentricity. In a series of five experiments, subjects compared the duration of foveal disks to disks presented at different retinal eccentricities on the horizontal meridian. The results show that the perceived duration of a visual stimulus declines with increasing eccentricity. The effect was replicated with various stimulus orders (Experiments 1–3), as well as with cortically magnified stimuli (Experiments 4–5), ruling out that the effect was merely caused by different cortical representation sizes. The apparent decreasing duration of stimuli with increasing eccentricity is discussed with respect to current models of time perception, the possible influence of visual attention and respective underlying physiological characteristics of the visual system.

Time and causality: editorial

Time and causality: editorial